"The ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which handles law school accreditation, voted during a Chicago meeting Friday to circulate for comment a proposal to drop a rule that law schools use a 'valid and reliable' admissions test." - Reuters Legal, May 23, 2022.
The ABA favors elimination of requiring the LSAT and other standardized tests such as the GRE for admission. This is in sync with the national movement to halt the explosion of standardized testing. A major driver on that is this: Such a mechanism can operate against those who haven't had a traditional middle-class background.
In the ABA proposal law schools would have the decision-making to require a standardized test or not. Input from the public has no cut-off date. Usually the ABA puts a 30-day deadline on that kind of initiative. However, it indicates it intends to review this at its November 2022 meeting. Obviously comments should be submitted before then.
Of course, if the LSAT goes poof so does the whole industry built around it. That ranges from creating and administering the test to coaching for it. Overall, standardized testing is big business. And, it generates jobs. Many well-paying. Once I had a lucrative freelance gig grading ACT writing tests for high school students.
Another result is that law school admissions will have to reconfigure how to assess each factor in an application.
A third more general one is this: Those who excel at doing standardized tests will lose that advantage in everything from admission to elite higher education to certain kinds of employment. However, new versions of tests could emerge. For instance, niches in the Artificial Intelligence industry are developing screenings for evaluating skill sets. The concept of "talent" could become an anachronism, replaced by the focus on skill chunks.
Full Disclosure: I found it intellectually stimulating to prepare for the LSAT. I analyzed previous LSAT tests to get the hang of the kind of thinking expected. Because of creativity, traditionally I hadn't scored high on standardized tests. In college I even wrote a paper on that. But zeroing in on the patterns of mindsets required by the developers of the LSAT landed me the right score to be admitted to Harvard Law School.
Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.
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